Aggression

Aggression

Any behavior indebted to inflict psychological or physical harm on another organism or object

Impulsive Aggression

Aggressive behavior that pic yes with only a small amount of forethought or intent and that is determined primarily by impulsive emotions

Hostile Aggression

Aggressive behavior stemming from angry or hostile impulses with a primary goal to inflict pain on someone

Instrumental Aggression

Aggressive behavior stemming from a desire to achieve a goal separate from inflicting pain on someone

Physical Aggression

Aggressive behavior intended to cause physical harm

Non Physical Aggression

Verbal Aggression (name calling) & Relational Aggression

Relational Aggression

Also an example of indirect aggression, aggressive behavior indented to cause harm to a person’s relationships

Gender Differences in Aggression

• 91% of murders committed by males

• 93% or robberies committed by males

• 89% of aggravated committed by males

Biological Basis for Aggression

Ultimate Answers: Defending territory, Establishing dominance hierarchies, competing for resources or mates

Evolutionary Perspective

natural selection shaped the human mind to include adaptations that helped ancestors survive and reproduce

Technology and distortion bc of aggression

• Hunsns and other animals respond to cues to indicate submission (i.e. dogs display their throats)

• But this doesn’t work if the aggressive act occurs so quickly that the aggressor can’t react to these cues

Violence Inhibition Mechanism

Physiological process that stops aggressive behavior when the victim displays distress signals

Violence inhibition mechanism: An experiment

• Psychopaths and non-psychopathic criminals where shown 3 kinds of pics: Neutral, threatening & Distress Cues

• Electrodermal Response (Skin conductance) was recorded (indicator of physiological arousal)

Violence inhibition mechanism: An experiment Results

Psychopaths showed reduced electrodermal responses to distress cues compared to controls → support for deficit in the violence inhibition mechanism

Alcohol produced behavior like

• Reduced self-consciousness→ deindividuation

• Reduced atrito consequences of actions

• Reduced self control

Relationship between alcohol & aggression

• 65% of homicides and 55% of domestic violence, assailant and/84 victim had been drinking

• In lab studies comparing with placebo: People give stronger shocks & report more anger when thinking about conflict with romantic partner

Alcohol & Aggression (Kreutzer, Schneider & Myatt 1984)

Participants who were told that they drank a large amount of alcohol (high expectancy) show more hostility

Social Learning Theory

Behavior is acquired through observational learning and to a lesser extent operant conditioning

Social Learning Theory: Operant Conditioning

Rewards obtained by aggression today will increase ins use tomorrow

Microaggression

When seemingly “small” think individuals say or do in the workplace or other environments can leave a long-lasting impression in people’s’ minds

Microinvalidations

Characterized by communications or environmental cues that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of certain groups

Bobo Doll Experiment

Demonstrated that children can learn aggressive behaviors through observation and imitation

Bobo Doll Experiment Results

Children in the aggressive condition showed significantly more aggressive behavior than those in the non-aggressive behaviors

Vicarious Reinforcement

Form of observational learning where an individual learns a behavior by observing another person’s actions and the consequences they experience

Inhibition Reinforcement (Vicarious Reinforcement)

When a child stops performing a behavior because they observe that someone else gets punished for it

Disinhibition Reinforcement (Vicarious Reinforcement)

When a child starts performing a behavior because they se someone else getting rewarded for it

Does Punishment Work?

• When the punishment itself is aggressive that aggression can be modeled- leading to more aggression

• Punishment leads to extrinsic motivation to comply not intrinsic

Aggressive Scripts

• An internalized representation of how events progress that include aggressive behavior

• Cause people to behave more aggressively, and to perceive more aggression in the actions of others

Aggressive Scripts (Steps)

Acquisition and Encoding Phase: Script is 1st learned

Maintenance Phase: Script is reinforced when person thinks about it, or when they see other examples of it

Retrieval and Emission Phase: Script is enacted

Culture of Honor

An evolved culture in the southern U.S. in which violence is relatively widely accepted and practiced

• “A man has the right to kill in order to defend his family and house”

Media Effects: The Effects of Violent lyrics (Method)

Participants listened to violent vs. non-violent songs that were either humorous or not

Media Effects: The Effects of Violent lyrics (Results)

Violent lyrics lead to an increase in aggressive irrespective of whether they are humorous or not

Media Influence Experiment

Participants play the play station game Mortal Kombat on various levels of bloodiness. Aggressive thoughts are measured before and after the game

How media leads to violence

Through habituation become desensitized to violence. Depictions of violence can change values and attitudes through cultivation

Frustration-Aggression Theory

When humans are prevented from achieving an important goal they become frustrated and aggressive

Amygdala

Influences and controls our aggression is part of the brain. Mostly responsible for how we react to and perceive aggression and fear

Social Reinforcement

When a person is rewarded, or reinforced by their society for performing a certain action of displaying a specific behavior

Gender Socialization

Process in which children learn these gender roles begins at birth

Laboratory Aggression Paradigms (Eagly & Steffen, 1986; Bettencourt & Miller, 1996)

Meta analyses of gender differences

Laboratory Aggression Paradigms (Eagly & Steffen, 1986; Bettencourt & Miller, 1996) Results

Concluded that women are less aggressive than men because social roles encourage aggression in men but not women

Situational Factors

Any important features of the situation, such as the presence of provocation or aggressive cue. Influence aggression is temperature

Excitation Transfer Theory

The phenomenon that occurs when people who are already experiencing arousal from one event tend to also experience unrelated emotions

Social Reinforcement

When a person is rewarded, or reinforced, by their society for performing a certain action or displaying a specific behavior

Reciprocal Determinism

The ideas that there is an interplay between our personality and the way we interpret events and how they influence us

The Social-Ecological Model: A Framework for Prevention

To better understand violence and the effect of potential prevention strategies

Individual

First level, identifies biological ands personal history factors that increase the likelihood of becoming a victim or perpetrator of violence

Relationship

Second level, examines close relationships that may increase the risk of experiencing violence as a victim or perpetrator

Community

Third level, explores the settings, such as schools, workplaces and neighborhoods, in which social relationships and seeks to identify characteristics of these settings that associated with becoming victims or perpetrators of violence

Societal

Fourth level, looks at the broad societal factors that help create in which violence is encouraged or inhibited

Genetic Determinants of Aggression

Finding from large selection of the twin and adoption studies that have investigated the genetic and environmental architecture of aggressive behavior

Aggression & Sports

• Types Aggression: Instrumental & hostile aggression

• In this aspect aggression is a characters can have many negative was well s posture d effects in performance